Deliciosa’s DFW diary

miggy · 8 February 2007 at 1:04AM

LookingAhead wrote:

could you spare £10 or so to buy a hand blender to make soups?

I have a feeling the Tesco value ones are about £5 - don't know how good they are.
Many thanks for the recipes, LA - I am headed off to stock up on lentils tomorrow - determined that when I go back to work I will be taking cheap, healthy lunches!

miggy · 8 February 2007 at 1:10AM

deliciosa wrote:

So I feel much much better!!!

I am so pleased to hear this - and I admit to drooling over the sound of the fajita, even though I don't eat meat! I expect there were all sorts of essential trace elements in the veg, which would lift your spirits, but even if there weren't it sounded delicious.
If you have any dried beans, especially things like mung beans, you can google for instructions and sprout your own - they are brilliant food value because of the concentration of nutrients in the young shoots, but it's cheaper to make your own and I think they would go well in a turkey fajita.
Did you have any joy finding cheap bread at the supermarket? Ours reduces baguettes to 10p at the end of the day.

deliciosa · 8 February 2007 at 11:33AM

Right, I have decided to make a nice new diary entry to sum up the things I’ve done in the last few days.

A big saving: I got my interest free season ticket loan from my company and I bought a yearly travelcard right away. It cost £928. They will deduct £92.8 from my salary every month for ten months. A monthly travelcard would cost £89.90 for the same zones. This means I would pay £1078.8 annually, so the annual saving is £150!!! Feeling very good about this achievment and I wont even notice that they deduct the monies because I will never see it!! Yay, yay. And, as an additional goodie, I have ran the money through my amex first – I paid it into amex then bought the ticket from amex, meaning that I have just gained 928 BA miles with this one transaction and it did not cost me any money. My miles are piling up nicely – I just used up £15000 of them to buy a ticket and I am already at £5000 again…

Capital One card: I have transferred the balance to my M&S credit card – they gave me an employee rate of 9.9% (wow) and a 3.5% on all balance transfers, no fee. Called Capital one and wanted to close the account (see my other thread). They offered to review my account and then they might be able to give me a better deal (yeah, better than the 29.9%....) I decided to give them a week or so to come up with something – if they could offer me 0% on BTs, I would actually keep the card… Lets see. It might be just that they count on me spending on the card again, in which case they are soul sucking liar lizards  but even so, tough luck because I have cut up the card and I don’t even know where its pieces are. I think I will def. cancel it by the end of next week.

Being money savvy: Thanks to all of you lovely people – SF, miggy, lynz, lookingahead and just everyone, (I am typing this in word (at work) so I cant see your posts now) I decided to eat wisely and invest into a meal pot or a thermos – I’ll pop in to woolworths or wherever this evening to find something suitable. It would make so much difference if I could actually bring in my soya milk to work. Also all the recipes I received from you all, thank you very much, I am saving them in a separate folder on my computer and I will try a different one every day. Update on lunch: I will go today with my colleagues to eat in the subsidised restaurant (yeah I came in to work – I just cant rest because theres so many things that need doing, but I will leave early.) – budget for lunch: £1.35. This, of course, will mean a lot of food so that I don’t have to spend on dinner. I am not that hungry in the evenings anyway. And tomorrow I will try to bring my soya milk in etc. And yesterday I resisted buying a dvd for £7 (and I ususally do buy them.. yes I know….) I just hovered around HMV and didn’t buy anything, so all I spent was on food and that was a good investment and very good value….

So today I am all positive again, partly thanks to all the support I got from all of you guys. And tomorrow is my big payday! This will be about £1700 minimum – I cant wait to start allolcating this money to my credit cards etc… how exciting!! I haven’t seen this amount of money together for a very, very long time. I have always been paid weekly for the last year or so. And even before, the salary was less. Maybe it will be even more, maybe around £1900 ish – lets hope. So I will give you an update tomorrow as well, but also checking back in the afternoon.

Sorry I couldn’t react to all your messages but Im at work and I don’t want people se eIm am on a forum – not nice thing I know, so I will just log in, paste this, and go. Will be checking back in lunchbreak and will write more.

Thank you for all your support!!

Ps: just quickly to miggy: yeah tesco does sell 10p baguettes, I bought two!!!! Thanks for the idea!
Ps2: just saw lookingahead’s post: yes that’s a very good idea, I will invest in something sensible  I’ll fish around on the internet in lunchbreak!

Skint_Catt · 8 February 2007 at 11:53AM

miggy wrote:

I have a feeling the Tesco value ones are about £5 - don't know how good they are

Ours is brilliant!!

Don't use it as much as I could, but it works really well!

Glad to hear you're eating better hun! All adds up. Good news on the Amex points too!

Nothing like family to make you feel better!

Keep at it, we're all here to help in our own little ways!

Catt xx

hypno06 · 8 February 2007 at 12:12PM

Do you have a freezer at home? You could freeze some of the cheap bread when you find it and you would then be ready for the next carb fix!

You sound so much better than you did just a few days ago. Stay strong, enjoy your journey and keep smiling x

slowlyfading · 8 February 2007 at 12:32PM

You sound so much more positive today, I'm so glad

And keep that chin up

SF :heartpuls

deliciosa · 8 February 2007 at 1:30PM

Thank you Catt, Hypno, SF

I bought a vegetable lasagna and vegetables at work and also a baguette and I spent £1.50. I just failed my budget again and feel like a failure, again

I'm not going to buy anything today or tomorrow... lucky i still have my chicken at home...

Skint_Catt · 8 February 2007 at 2:45PM

s'only 15p. I know they all add up, but dont worry about it please?!

I'm sure you'll save it elsewhere soon enough!

Catt xx

miggy · 8 February 2007 at 3:13PM

deliciosa wrote:

Thank you Catt, Hypno, SF

I bought a vegetable lasagna and vegetables at work and also a baguette and I spent £1.50. I just failed my budget again and feel like a failure, again

I'm not going to buy anything today or tomorrow... lucky i still have my chicken at home...

15p overspend doesn't make you a failure.
Especially not when you've just saved £150 and got all those free airmiles!
If it just happened that you had set your budget at £1.55 instead of £1.35, would you have been happy now...? Are you being just a little hard on yourself?

and you resisted the £7 CD, so even if you offset the 15p against that, you are still £6.85 better off today than you might have been.
You seem to me to go from one extreme to the other, which is great when it's positive but honestly it's not worth casting yourself down in the depths for the sake of 15p. Why not allow yourself a pound 'spare' each week - enough so you can allow yourself that little bit of slack (you can always invest any left over in baguettes, LOL. Glad you found those!)
As you get more into this you will find what works best: at the moment you're still on a learning curve. Veggie lasagne and vegetables for £1.35 sounds really good to me and I'm not on London prices, so I say,'Keep up the good work, you're doing ever so well!'

Skint_Catt · 8 February 2007 at 3:30PM

Second everything miggy said!

Bargain lasagne and veggies!! :T

(I'm gonna keep an eye out for those baguettes!)

Catt xx

Deliciosa’s DFW diary

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